An integrated, programming model-driven framework for NoC–QoS support in cluster-based embedded many-cores

• Integrated HW–SW approach to deliver QoS on top of parallel programming models.
• Extending OpenMP/MPI parallel programming model with custom QoS extensions.
• QoS-aware OpenMP/MPI software stack for parallel computing in many-core systems.
• Design of scalable and clustered NoC-based many-core embedded architecture.
• Benchmarking of real-system heterogeneous parallel workloads in different scenarios.

Embedded SoC designs are embracing the many-core paradigm to deliver the required performance to run an ever-increasing number of applications in parallel. Networks-on-Chip (NoC) are considered as a convenient technology to implement many-core embedded platforms. The complex and non-uniform nature of the traffic flows generated when multiple parallel applications are running simultaneously calls for Quality-of-Service (QoS) extensions in the NoC, but to efficiently exploit similar services it is necessary to expose them to the software in a easy-to-use yet efficient manner. In this paper we present an integrated hardware/software approach for delivering QoS on top of an hybrid OpenMP-MPI parallel programming model. Our experimental results show the effectiveness of our proposal over a broad range of benchmarks and application mappings, demonstrating the ability to manage parallelism under QoS requirements effortlessly from the programming model.